Soo's Jianghu — 10
It was daytime, and still the sky had gone dim, the snow coming down in great soft clumps.
The Heavenly Demon arrived at her usual hour and stared at me, openly bewildered. It was time for training, and Soo was nowhere to be seen — only me, standing there doing heaven knew what. A look like that was only natural.
"What are you doing?"
I stopped the snowball I had been rolling.
"Making a snowman. Have you never seen one?"
The look she gave me asked what on earth that was supposed to be.
What — she truly had never seen one? For all her literary sensibilities, how did she not know a thing like this?
I rifled briefly through the Heavenly Demon's memories. As a child she had never made anything like a snowman. She had no memory of ever seeing one at all. Ah. There had been no one to teach her. Or else this world simply had no culture of snowmen. Was that even possible? If she didn't know, then I would teach her.
I pointed to a snowman off at one side of the yard: a small figure eight, arms stuck out to either side, a face made of twigs. It came only to my knees. I had built it a little while ago, to show Soo how it was done.
"It's a game where you make those, only bigger. With the snow coming down like this, training would be difficult, wouldn't it?"
I turned away and went back to rolling.
I had started because a faded memory of a man had suddenly flared bright — a snowman made in the impossibly distant past. On a day like this, I ought to make one at least once. There was another reason, of course. I wasn't expecting much of it. I only went on shaping the snow while thinking it would be nice if it worked.
I could see the Heavenly Demon's gaze traveling back and forth between the finished snowman and me at my rolling. I wasn't meeting her eyes, but I didn't need to. She was flustered, with no idea what she was meant to do, so I raised a hand and pointed toward the woods.
"Soo went to fetch materials. If you're bored, go after her. Or come roll snow the way I am."
I set the clump aside, sat back down, and packed the snow hard between my hands before rolling it out again, gently. For the record, I wasn't bare-handed. I had wadded up clothes too worn to keep and was using them like gloves. They were only cloth; leave them on too long and they would soak through, and I would take a frostbite for it. For a little while, though, they did well enough.
Round and round. I rolled the ball and grew it. Whether because there was little filth in the snow, or because so much had fallen that it never touched the dirt beneath, the ball was pure, unbroken white.
The Heavenly Demon did nothing else. She simply stood and watched.
I rolled with everything I had, turning the ball this way and that, changing direction again and again so it wouldn't pack itself into a cylinder. I pushed it past the fence — nothing left of it now but a trace buried under the snow — and somewhere along the way the ball swelled past my waist, all the way up to my chest.
Ah. A mistake.
I had rolled without thinking and lost hold of the size. Take it all the way over to where I had left the body, and it would be far too big...
I would think about that once I got there.
I herded the snowball along and parked it beside the one I had made when the Heavenly Demon arrived. As expected, it was much too big. What was I supposed to do with this. Nothing for it — I would simply finish the thing. I lifted the smaller ball. Choseol is fairly strong. I hoisted it lightly, and up it went.
Mm. It landed exactly where it should. The clumps stacked into a proper figure eight. But the lower half was absurdly large, and in a phrase the man from those faded memories would have known, it came to this.
Graaah — the mass!
Which is to say, thunder thighs.
I left the snowman where it stood and went into the house. From a corner of the room I pulled out the old clothes stuffed away there and came back out. Every one of them was Soo's. Every one of them was bound for the scrap heap. Unlike me, Soo moved so much that her clothes fell apart quickly — though the Heavenly Demon sent replacements often enough that there were plenty of spares.
I brought out only a jacket and dressed the snowman in it, then gathered a few stones lying near the house and pressed them in for eyes, nose, and mouth. Soo was already running back hard with branches in her arms, so it would be finished soon.
Still, however strange I might look, wasn't she staring a little too much? I walked up to the Heavenly Demon and raised an arm toward the kitchen. In winter, it was an especially warm place.
"There's snow piled on your head. If you're going to watch, don't stand out here freezing. Go wait in the kitchen."
She blinked at that. She wore the face of someone who had just heard something profoundly odd, so I asked again.
"What is it?"
The Heavenly Demon was just opening her mouth.
"Master!"
Soo had spotted her. She came bounding over with an armful of long, slender branches, and though the snow lay deep she didn't slow in the slightest. Behind her, her footprints were stamped into the white at wide, leaping intervals. If I walked there, I would sink to the knee. I might envy nothing else, but I envied that way of moving.
Then the faded memories dredged up something strange again. Words flickered — not Treading Snow Without a Trace. Training insufficient. What was this memory of mine demanding of a child who had been learning the martial arts for a little under half a year?
Anyway, the snowman needed finishing. I turned to Soo, who had brought the materials.
"Soo. Give me the branches."
"Wait!"
Lately it felt as if her defiance had grown worse. Her independence was growing. Excellent. At this rate, I could leave this place within two or three years. Choseol would be seventeen or eighteen by then — and at that age, in this world, she would be quite grown enough. Before I went, I would set in place what needed setting.
Memories.
They seem like nothing at all, these experiences. And yet now and then, without anyone quite noticing, they are what holds a person up. Someone who has not even this, and someone who has at least this much — the number of times they can clench their teeth and endure is not the same. Clenching your teeth is an essential technique. Memories like these don't guarantee it, of course. But if I can raise the odds, then I ought to do the work.
She was learning from the Heavenly Demon, so she would grow strong, without question. She would cut down whoever stood in her way, and bring that warmth to me.
Hehe.
I hoped she would stir up something like the blood calamity sleeping in those faded memories. Anyway. Wishing for that much was probably asking too much.
"Master! Master, make a snowman with us too!"
Soo said it beaming, right in front of her, and the Heavenly Demon's face went deeply troubled. It was terribly funny — the very picture of an adult who doesn't know how to play, thrown into a panic because a child has asked. Her childhood was long behind her, but trying it now and then wouldn't be so bad.
That was one thing. I still needed this finished, so why wasn't the girl coming over?
"Stop hanging off the Heavenly Demon and get over here."
"Okaaay."
There she was at last. I pointed at the ground, and Soo dumped the branches she had gathered. I picked out ones shaped like hands and stuck them into either side of the snowman, which until now had only a face and a body.
While I was at it, I hung little twigs along the body and over the head, for decoration.
"Finished."
A snowman with a touch of the East about it stood in the middle of the yard. A shame the lower half was a little plump, but there are days like that.
Clap, clap, clap. Soo beamed and applauded.
I looked at her, delighted, and at the Heavenly Demon beside her, at a loss for what she was supposed to do. She didn't know how to play. I had made one — shouldn't she be making one right away?
"All right, Soo, you make one too. And while you're at it, with the Heavenly Demon."
"Me?"
I had tacked that on at the end, and the Heavenly Demon startled. This woman. She had been strange since she arrived.
"Neither of you gets frostbite, do you? If you do, put gloves on. You've seen how it's done, so go ahead and make one."
"No — I have Soo's training to—"
"A day of play isn't going to bring the world down."
The Heavenly Demon's expression was thoroughly sour. Was it because she had lived a whole life without ever once doing a thing like this? How was I supposed to lead her into it?
Guide her plainly. A few of the faded memories surfaced. This one would do.
"Are your hands so clumsy you can't manage a single snowman?"
"I'll make one far more beautiful."
Mm. Beautifully hooked.
Just as I had, the Heavenly Demon sat down on the ground, packed a clump of snow, and rolled it round and round into a ball. Beside her, Soo shrieked with laughter and copied her exactly. And the sight of it — snow pouring down, a blue-skinned beauty in Eastern robes, building a snowman — was rather like modern art. In the world where the man of those faded memories had lived, you would need CG or stage makeup for a scene like this, which meant it would be difficult anywhere but the modern age. Skin of a pure, vivid blue is hard to come by, unless you are looking at a corpse.
The Heavenly Demon and Soo made their snowman side by side, perfectly amicable.
I went and sat beneath the eaves. When I pulled off the slightly damp gloves, my fingertips had gone red. Soo's fingers never reddened no matter how much snow she handled, so the Heavenly Demon likely had no need of gloves either. I watched the two of them at their work, then lifted my eyes to the sky.
Snow fell thick from a heaven dim with storm cloud, and everything around me was profoundly still. Snow works as a sound absorber. That was why. But it was not quiet for me. If anything, it was very loud, because I was watching more than a hundred harvesters on the move.
Even with so many people, the cold did not lessen. What I need is not the connection. It is the warmth inside the light.
The cold that freezes the breath, the fingers gone faintly frostbitten from the snow — they are not the same as the cold I feel. If anything, this is hot. I had thought heat would be what tormented me, but the cold torments me more. It shows, with perfect clarity, that the cold I feel does not come from temperature.
I looked at my fingers, their tips turned red. This was frostbite. I pressed down on reality itself, and at once the fingers went white. They returned to their proper color, as if they had never felt the cold to begin with. Not only the fingers — the chill that had filled my body vanished as well. But the cold in the truly deep place remained exactly as it was.
I don't think I will ever come to like a cold winter.
I was gazing blankly outward when, in the end, the two of them joined their strength and finished what they had begun. The result was a three-tiered snowman some three times the height of a person, and a laugh broke out of me.
Of course. Where there are people, a snowman is inevitable. In this place, there are two people.
Heehee.
So then, Heavenly Demon.
Do I look like a person to you? Am I living a life human enough to cover over the truth that I am a monster, and hide it?
I learn from failure. There will not be a second Eunjae. Refusing to call me by some dangerous name — that's far too cruel, isn't it.
So I will become your kind neighbor. So that someday, even if you die, you will look upon the traces you left behind and think that it is all right to call for me.
Let's get along, you and I.